When using readdir empty strings returned - php

Question

I am using readdir in the following code to get a list of all file names of images in a directory.
while (false !== ($entry = readdir($frameDir))){
$shapeName = explode('.',$entry);
if (!empty($shapeName[0]) && $shapeName[0] != '.' && $shapeName[0] != '..' && $shapeName[0] != '/'){
$shapeName = $shapeName[0];
$shapes['frames'][] = $shapeName;
}
After this code the script appends the '.png' to make it a valid file name.
As you can see I've tried to eliminate any chances of a blank file name being passed. Though when I run the script I end up getting a blank directory "/shapes/frame/.png" . This only happens for this particular directory. When I use the code on another of the three directories I get results as expected, and the code is the same logic as what is used above.
while (false !== ($entry = readdir($frameDotDir))){
$shapeName = explode('.',$entry);
if (!empty($shapeName[0]) && $shapeName[0] != '.' && $shapeName[0] != '..' && $shapeName[0] != '/'){
$shapeName = $shapeName[0];
$shapes['frame_dots'][] = $entry;
}
}
When checking the filesystem on the server, I can't find any files with blank names.
I am wondering what could be causing my script to be reading blank file names from the diretory.

Answer 1

File names cannot be empty (and will not). You did something wrong in your code. It should look like:
while ($entry = readdir($frameDir)){
// skip files which names starting with a dot
// like '.', '..' or hidden files
if (strpos($entry, '.') !== 0) {
$shapes['frame_dots'][] = $entry;
}
}
You see, less is more ;)

Answer 2

Why don't you use glob() instead of readdir().Just give it a pattern and it will let you process the filenames with much ease instead of doing the one by one scanning work. And in your case, there is no way it will return an empty file name. Also, have a look on glob flags in the documentation, you will be amazed of it's simplicity.
glob("*.png");
Output:
Array ( [0] => shape.png, [1] => shape2.png )

Answer 3

I was having the same problem with blank filenames usind readdir() it turn out to be that the directory name was wrong, turns out linux is case sensitive, in code the directory name starts with "I" and in linux the directory started with "i".
I guess the error was due to not handling opendir() errors. Check your code.